Party ring

The party ring is a British biscuit first made by Fox's Biscuits in 1983. It is a circular biscuit with a central finger-sized hole and is not dissimilar to shortbread in taste. On top of this is a layer of hard coloured icing with "wiggly" lines in a different colour. The five colour combinations are:

*Orange icing with white lines
*Pink icing with white lines
*Pink icing with yellow lines
*Purple icing with yellow lines
*Yellow icing with pink lines

Party rings were a product of the 1980s fashion for the newly developed chemical food dye system that enabled more lavish colours to be incorporated into the manufacture of biscuits. This made them a very popular choice for children's parties, where not only could the colours amuse, but the holes in the middle enabled them to be placed on a finger, often resulting in "ring races". These involved each child taking five rings and placing one on each finger of a hand. They would then proceed to eat them as fast as possible, with the inevitable danger of biting a finger a bit too hard.

The crisp, hard sheen on the icing is because of the use of carob bean gum — the carob, or locust bean, is also sometimes used as a chocolate substitute.

Because of the demographic popularity of the product, most "party ring children" are now of university age, and many universities have societies to appreciate such confectionery items. These societies came to notoriety in 1999 when Fox's Biscuits changed the packaging of party rings, causing petitions, heavy leafleting campaigns and a sit-in outside their production plant in Batley, West Yorkshire. A standard pack of party rings consists of a long plastic tray containing five biscuit wells, each holding four biscuits of the same pattern, making twenty biscuits per pack. Fox's decided to remove the purple/yellow biscuit because the dyes used had been linked to certain health problems. Instead of replacing them, they removed them completely, leaving only sixteen biscuits per pack. Through their determination, the university societies not only managed to have the purple/yellow biscuit reinstated (using newer, safer dyes), but many societies received a letter of apology from the managing director of Fox's Biscuits.